Hi everybody welcome back to the Be Therein Five Podcast. I'm Kate Kennedy, your

host. Today we have on a guest for the second time. It's been a couple years

though you may remember her insights and wit from part two of my deep dive about the Lula

Row documentary. She's the best-selling author of WordSut and cultish and host of the podcast

Sounds a Good cult. One Amanda Monte. Word's thought in cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult,

one Amanda Montel.

By trade, she's a linguist.

And she also describes herself as an overthinker,

a thought-spiler, and a dreamer, and I feel like many of us can relate.

I have a poster I'm looking at right now in my office that I hung up to look at while I'm

podcasting that says, don't overthink it.

It's almost as pathetic as like a cat hanging off something, you know those

like prints in a pediatrician's office and it's like hang in there. I love a reminder

on my walls. Traffic signs are to simply exist and overthinking is something that I am

much most guilty of. She wrote an incredible book I read a few weeks ago called

The Age of Magical Overthinking notes on Modern Ir irrationality comes out April 9th, which is this week.

And yeah, I mean, I could rave about it in my own words that aren't nearly as eloquent as how it's described on its

back cover which says it's a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal

narrative that explores our cognitive biases in the power, disadvantage, and highlights of magical thinking.

And in her terms, magical thinking can be broadly defined as the belief that one's internal

thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world.

So think of the conviction that you can, you know, manifest your way out of poverty or stave off

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